AS/400 command definitions

[Terrence Enger]

Greetings,

This is verging off-topic, so I feel a bit bad about picking on the
nice people on this this.  Still, I expect never to get a better
excuse to expound on one of my fetishes, the "command definition"
facility provided by the AS/400.

Consider three familiar facilities:

(*) You may be familiar with man pages provided for linux programs.
    They are informative, but I often have to jump back and forth
    between reading in one terminal window and typing at the command
    line in another terminal window.

(*) Another useful item is a procedure prototype, something you will
    see many examples of in a C or java program.  The name of a
    parameter may be a bit terse as an explanation, but you do get
    compile-time type-checking.  Of course, procedures are not
    programs.

(*) Every day, you follow lots of hyperlinks through the net.  On the
    rare occasion you have to enter some information, the prompt is
    right in front of you to remind you what you are doing.  Still,
    web pages are not programs.

Now imagine a language, mostly declarative, which defines a prototype
for a *program*.  You provide brief prompt text for each option or
parameter, rules for validation of parameters and relationships
between parameters, and a hyperlink into the man page for the program
and for each option or parameter.  Imagine that you are working at a
command line or editing program source code, and you can call up a
display of this information.  Beside the prompt text, you type in
values for each option or parameter you need.  When you are done and
the values satisfy the validation rules, the generated command string
is delivered to the command interpreter or into your source file.

Ahhh!  Doesn't that feel good?

Cheers,
Terry.


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